“Humanism”
is a word that has had and continues to have a number of meanings.
The focus here is on kind of atheistic world-view espoused by those
who organize and campaign under that banner in the UK and abroad.

We
should acknowledge that there remain other uses of term. In one of
the loosest senses of the expression, a “Humanist” is
someone whose world-view gives special importance to human concerns,
values and dignity. If that is what a Humanist is, then of course
most of us qualify as Humanists, including many religious theists.
But the fact remains that, around the world, those who organize under
the label “Humanism” tend to sign up to a narrower,
atheistic view.

What
does Humanism, understood in this narrower way, involve? The
boundaries of the concept remain somewhat vague and ambiguous.
However, most of those who organize under the banner of Humanism
would accept the following minimal seven-point characterization of
their world-view.

1.
Humanists place particular emphasise on the role of science
and reason.
They believe that, if we want to know what is true, reason and
science are invaluable tools – tools we should apply without
limit. No beliefs should be placed beyond rational, critical
scrutiny.

2.
Humanists are atheists.
That is not to say that they must be atheists in the positive sense,
however. Humanists need not deny there is a god or gods. But they do
not sign up to belief in a god or gods. Humanists tend to be
similarly sceptical about the existence of other supernatural agents
of the sort that many religions suppose exist, such as angels and
demons.

3.
Humanists suppose that this is very probably the
only life we have.
There is no heaven or hell awaiting us. Nor are we reincarnated.

4.
Humanists usually believe in the existence
and importance of moral value.Humanists
tend to have a particular interest and concern with moral and ethical
issues. Most Humanists believe that actions can be objectively
morally right or wrong. They therefore deny that the existence of
objective moral values entails the existence of God. So far as
knowledge of right and wrong is concerned, Humanists place strong
emphasise on the role of science and/or reason. In particular, they
usually suppose that our ethical framework should be strongly
informed and shaped by an empirically grounded understanding of what
human beings are actually like, and of what enables them to flourish.
Obviously, when a Humanist offers moral justifications, they will
justifications rooted in something other than religious authority and
scripture.

5.
Humanists emphasize our individual
moral autonomy and responsibility.
They insist each individual must ultimately take responsibility for
making moral judgements, even if that judgement is that that
individual ought
to
stick with the moral framework handed to them by a tradition or
community. They suppose that, convenient though it might be if we
could each could hand over responsibility for making tough moral
decisions to some external religious, political or other leader or
authority, that cannot be done (except perhaps in some very special
cases). A good moral education will be one that avoids encouraging
passive, uncritical acceptance of a particular moral and religious or
other world view (including Humanism itself), and will instead
focuses on developing the intellectual, emotional and other skills
individuals will need to discharge that responsibility properly.

6.
Humanists are secularists
in
the sense that they favour an open, democratic society and believe
the State should takeneutral
stance
on religion. The State should not privilege religious over atheist
views, but neither should it privilege atheist views of those of the
religious. Humanists believe the State should protect equally the
freedom of individuals to hold and promote both religious and atheist
points of view. A Humanist would obviously profoundly opposed to the
kind of theocracies that coerce people into accepting a particular
religious belief, but they are no less opposed to totalitarian states
in which citizens are obliged to accept atheism. Humanists want a
level playing field so far as religion and non-religion are
concerned. This is not the case in, for example, the United Kingdom,
where for example twenty-six Bishops are automatically allocated
seats in the House of Lords and where the State funds increasing
numbers of various religious, but not Humanist, schools. These are
two important campaign issues for the British Humanist Association.

7.
Humanists believe that we can enjoy significant, meaningful lives
even if there is no is a God, and whether or not we happen to be
religious. Many Humanists would go further and insist that, in some
respects, our lives may become rather more meaningful in the absence
of gods and/or religion. Some argue that religions can sometimes act
as an impediment to our leading meaningful lives by, for example,
leading us not
to
think hard about the Big Questions; forcing us to live a certain way
out of fear cosmic punishment; and/or wasting our lives promoting
false beliefs because of a mistaken expectation of a life to come.

What
Humanism is not

The
above sketch of Humanism does not include certain features that are
nevertheless often associated with it. These include:

Speciesism.
Humanists, as defined above, are not obliged to believe that only
human
beings matter, morally speaking. Nor should Humanism be taken to
require the view that it that it is by
virtue of being
a member of a particular species – the human species - that
subjects are deserving of special moral consideration (which is not
to say that humans are not, as a rule, deserving of special
consideration). Many Humanists would condemn such an attitude as a
form of “speciesism” - a form of prejudice against other
species. This is not to say that Humanists are necessarily immune to
speciesism, as the philosopher Peter Singer notes: "... despite
many individual exceptions, Humanists have on the whole been unable
to free themselves from one of the most central of these Christian
dogmas: the prejudice of speciesism." (Singer, 2004, p19)

Utilitarianism.
Many Humanists are drawn to some form of consequentialism, and some
would probably describe themselves as utiiitarians. True, almost all
Humanists believe that happiness and suffering matter, morally
speaking, and should certainly be taken into account when weighing up
ethical questions. However, utilitarianism is not obligatory for
Humanists. There is a wide variety of ethical theories open to
Humanists, including for example, virtue ethicism and non-theistic
versions of Kantianism.

Utopianism.
Some Humanists are highly optimistic. Often they are supposed to be
naively so, believing that science and reason must ultimately triumph
over the forces of superstition and unreason, ushering in a Brave New
Word of peace and prosperity. However, there is no requirement that
Humanists be utopian, and in fact many are rather pessimistic.

Scientism.
Some Humanists embrace scientism
–
the view that every meaningful question can in principle be answered
by application of the scientific method. However, Humanists are not
obliged to accept scientism and many reject it. Certainly, the view
that moral questions are ultimately answerable by scientific means is
not accepted by all Humanists, many of whom are persuaded that the
problem of the is/ought gap raised by Hume (the problem that
empirical observation reveals only what is the case, not what ought
to be, and one cannot one legitimately infer an “ought”
from an “is”) means that while our moral judgements
should be scientifically informed, and while science certainly has a
very important role to play in establishing what is morally right or
wrong, moral judgement cannot be justified in wholly scientific terms
(though note that the Humanist Sam Harris, in his book The
Moral Landscape (Harris,
2011) argues that science can, in fact, answer moral questions, once
morality is understood as those values that lead to human
flourishing). Humanists can, and often do, also take the view that
metaphysical questions such as why the universe exists, or why there
is anything at all, are questions that science cannot answer. Some
Humanists reject these particular questions as meaningless (asking
“Why is there anything at all?”, they may suggest, is
akin to asking “What’s North of the North Pole?”),
while others, while not denying the question is legitimate, take the
view that, while they may not know what the answer is, they can
nevertheless justifiably rule certain answers out, and indeed, can
even rule some out on the basis of observation of the world around us
(for example, they may suppose that the suggestion that universe is
the creation of an all-powerful, all-evil deity can be ruled out on
the basis of observation, for doesn’t the universe contains far
too much good for it plausibly to be the creation of such an evil
god?). Those Humanists who are positive atheists may suppose that
“Why is there anything at all?” is a bona
fide question
to which they do not, and perhaps cannot, know the answer, yet may
also quite consistently suppose they can reasonably rule certain
answers out – such as that the universe was created by the
Judeo-Christian God.

Naturalism.
Humanists are not obliged to embrace naturalism, the view that the
natural/physical reality is the only reality there is, and/or that
the natural/physical facts are the only facts that there are. Many
Humanists do accept naturalism. Some Humanists even define Humanism
so that, by definition, Humanists sign up to naturalism. However,
plenty of those who describe themselves as Humanists would certainly
question, and many would reject, naturalism. Some may reject
naturalism on the grounds that it is vacuous or confused concept.
What is contrast with? The supernatural? But if the supernatural is
then defined as the non-natural, both concepts remain empty. Other
Humanists may reject naturalism because, for example, they are
mathematical Platonists. Many mathematicians suppose mathematics
describes a transcendent, non-natural reality. Such a mathematician
could still be an atheist, of course – even a positive atheist.
They may reject belief in god, gods and/or supernatural agents. They
can also be a Humanist, for they are still free to subscribe to the
seven views outlined above. Humanists may also reject naturalism
because they suppose there exist moral facts and that moral facts are
non-natural facts, or because they suppose there are facts about
minds that are non-natural facts. Again, such views do not, or do not
obviously, require that one sign up to any sort of theism. A global
survey of professional philosophers and graduate students carried out
in by philpapers.org in 2009, found that just under half of them are
wedded to naturalism, yet only 14.6% accept some form of theism. So a
significant proportion fail to accept either theism or naturalism.
Yet they may still be Humanists, as characterized here.

Materialism
and physicalism.
Materialism is the view that the only reality is material and
physicalism the view that the only reality is physical. Neither is a
philosophy that Humanists are obliged to accept, for much the same
reasons that they are not obliged to accept naturalism. That charge
that Humanists are “materialists” is often doubly
misleading because “materialist” is also used to denote a
shallow person preoccupied with acquiring material possessions. An
ambiguous charge of “materialism” against Humanists
therefore does them a double disservice.

Given
that neither Humanism, nor positive atheism, as I have characterised
these terms, requires that adherents accept scientism, naturalism,
utilitarianism, utopianism, materialism or physicalism, it in
sufficient to refute Humanism or positive atheism that one succeed in
refuting one, or even all, of these views. While some Humanists may
sign up to some, even all, of these various positions, they are free
to abandon all of them without abandoning their Humanism.

Critics
of Humanism often assume Humanists are wedded to at least some of the
above views. Popular attempted refutations of Humanism – and
also attempted refutations of positive atheism – often involve
no more than attempts to refute, say materialism or naturalism. Such
arguments leave Humanism unscathed.

Is
Humanism wholly negative?

It
is sometimes said that Humanists are not “for” anything.
Humanism is defined entirely in terms of what it rejects. It should
be clear why this particular charge does not stick, given how
Humanism is characterized above.

It
is true that atheism is defined in a negative fashion – in
terms of a non-acceptance or denial of a belief. However, Humanism
involves more than just atheism. All Humanists are atheists, but not
all atheists are Humanists. Stalin and Mao were atheists, but were
not Humanists. That is because Stalin and Mao failed to sign up to
certain key Humanist views on secularism, freedom and moral autonomy
Indeed, atheists like Stalin and Mao would persecute those who
qualify as Humanists in the above sense. They were very much opposed
to free thought on moral, religious and other important questions.
Humanists, by contrast, are for freedom of thought and expression.
They are for an open, democratic society. They are also for
encouraging and helping children to think critically and
independently on moral, religious, political and other big questions.
Humanists do not just reject approaches to answering such questions
based on religious scripture and dogma, they are also for positive
alternatives to such approaches, including (as far as is possible)
the application of science and reason.

What
of another charge also sometimes levelled at Humanism – that is
merely an arbitrary collection of disparate ideas rather than a
coherent world-view? Humanism, like religion, focuses on certain “big
questions” of the sort that have been of concern to humanity
since before the dawn of civilization - questions about
how we should live, how society should be organized, about what is
right and wrong, about what is of ultimate importance, and so on.
Religions too have focused on such questions, but they are not the
exclusive preserve of religion. There is a long tradition of
non-religious philosophical thought
on such questions running back to Antiquity. It is on this
non-religious intellectual tradition that Humanism draws. What pulls
together the seven threads outlined above into something like a
system of thought is their shared focus on “big questions”,
a degree of interconnection (for example, scepticism about gods will
lead to scepticism about the suggestion that our moral sense derives
from a god), and the pivotal role played by the first thread –
Humanists try to answer these questions through the application of
science and reason, rather than relying on revelation, scripture,
etc. Rightly or wrongly, Humanists believe Humanism is the
most reasonableworld-view
to adopt. They would (or should) discourage acceptance of Humanism as
some sort of dogma.

The
Enlightenment roots of modern Humanism, and the role of tradition

Clearly,
Humanist thinking draws heavily on, and has much in common with, the
Enlightenment thought. During the Enlightenment, individuals were
encouraged to throw off reliance on tradition – particularly
religious tradition – and think for themselves. Denis Diderot’s
Eighteenth CenturyEncyclopedia defines
the Enlightened thinker as one who

trampling
on prejudice, tradition, universal consent, authority, in a word, all
that enslaves most minds, dares to think for himself.

Probably
the most familiar definition of Enlightenment comes from the
philosopher Immanuel Kant. In a magazine article, Kant characterized
Enlightenment as the

[e]mergence
of man from his self-imposed infancy. Infancy is the inability to use
one’s reason without the guidance of another. It is
self-imposed, when it depends on a deficiency, not of reason, but of
the resolve and courage to use it without external guidance. Thus the
watchword of the Enlightenment is Sapere
Aude! Have
the courage to use one’s own reason! (quoted in entry on
“Enlightenment”, Honderich, 1995).

Sapare
Aude could
easily be a slogan of the modern Humanist movement.

However,
some critics of the Enlightenment suggest that what Kant encouraged
individuals to do, to apply their own powers of reason independently
of any tradition, cannot be done. Whatever forms of reasoning we
employ are born of and dependent on some tradition or other, as the
contemporary philosopher Alistair MacIntyre notes:

all
reasoning takes place within the context of some traditional mode of
thought. (MacIntyre, 1985, p.222)

We
can never achieve a tradition-free perspective. Hence what Diderot
suggests we do – cast aside all tradition and think for
ourselves - cannot be done.

Given
modern Humanism’s Enlightenment roots, has MacIntyre also
raised a significant problem for Humanism? I cannot see that he has.
Humanists are not obliged to accept that the application of reason
should be tradition-free. Indeed, Humanists themselves typically
point out that they are drawing on a long intellectual tradition that
runs back to Antiquity. True Humanists say is that nothing should be
deemed off-limits so far as critical scrutiny is concerned. Certain
beliefs should not be considered immune, certainly not because they
happen to be traditional religious beliefs, for example. However,
that is a point with which MacIntyre himself concurs. He insists:

It
is one thing to say that, in applying reason, we can’t help but
draw on a tradition. It is quite another to say that we shouldn’t
subject traditional beliefs to critical scrutiny.

MacIntyre
also suggests that the Enlightenment thinkers made a mistake in
supposing that morality can be given a wholly rational
foundation. That was certainly Kant’s view – he supposed
that the rabbit of morality could be conjured out of the hat of
reason without appeal to tradition. However, it is now widely
supposed that Kant was mistaken about that. But then, because the
Enlightenment thinkers had kicked away the old moral foundations of
(largely religious) tradition, they left morality without any
foundation at all. As a consequence, across the post-Enlightenment
West, morality is in a state of collapse. The only cure, it is
sometimes suggested, is a return to the kind of religious tradition
that previously underpinned Western morality.

Notice
however, Kant’s characterization of Enlightenment does not
entail that followers of Enlightenment thought sign up to the view
that morality can be given a wholly rational
foundation. That morality can be given such a foundation may have
been Kant’s view, but it was not a view universally shared by
Enlightenment thinkers (it was not David Hume’s view, for
example), and it is, more relevantly, not generally the view of
Humanists. Humanists believe we should apply reason as far as we are
able. In particular, they believe we should apply reason in
attempting to answering moral questions. And there’s no doubt
that the application of reason within the moral sphere can be a
valuable exercise – in, for example, revealing unacknowledged
consequences of our most basic moral convictions, revealing internal
tensions or inconsistencies in our moral positions, exposing how our
moral reasoning is based on faulty logic or false empirical
assumptions, and so on. But that is not necessarily to suppose that
morality can be founded on reason alone.

Humanism
and moral relativism

Humanists
are sometimes accused of taking a relativist position, particularly
with regard to moral value. While a few Humanists may knowingly
embrace relativism, many quite explicitly reject the relativist view.
Still, it is often suggested by critics of Humanism that moral
relativism is an unavoidable consequence of Humanism. The kind of
moral relativism to which Humanists are typically accused of having
committed themselves (even if unwittingly) is that the truth about
what is morally right or wrong is relative to individuals or
communities. There no truth with a capital “T” so far the
wrongness of female circumcision, polygamy, or even murder, is
concerned. What is true for one individual or community may be false
for another. This is because moral value is a subjectively-rooted
property, like deliciousness.

Why
suppose Humanism entail relativism? Some theists maintain that God is
the only possible source and foundation of objective moral value. So,
they argue, if there is no God, then judgements about moral value can
boil down to nothing more expression of subjective taste or
preference. Those Humanists who are positive atheists, then, cannot
avoid the slide into moral relativism.

However,
the principle that God is the only possible foundation of objective
moral value is, to say the least, contentious. The principle is not
widely accepted among professional philosophers. Arguments for the
principle often turn on dubious assumptions, such the assumption that
positive atheism entails naturalism, which is untrue.

Even
if the principle that God is the only possible foundation of
objective moral value could be established, and that some such
foundation is required if there are to be such values at all, a
positive atheist Humanist might maintain that such is the strength of
the case against the existence of a God capable of grounding such
values that belief in objective moral values must, then also be
abandoned. However, instead of embracing moral relativism, such a
positive atheist might instead adopt moral nihilism, insisting not
that moral value is relative, but that it is non-existent. If a
Humanist is, by definition, someone who accepts the reality of moral
value, then someone who came to adopt a nihilist position would no
longer be a Humanist. However, some of those who maintain that moral
value is an illusion, but nevertheless want to organize to help other
human beings flourish, etc. do indeed describe themselves as
“Humanists”. Whether such individuals should be classed
as a Humanist is debatable. Perhaps the requirement that Humanists
accept the existence of moral value is too strong (which is why it is
not built into my seven point characterization above)

Whether
or not such a moral nihilist can rightly be called a Humanist, moral
relativism is certainly a difficult position to square with Humanism,
for a number reasons. Note, for example, that the Humanist view that
we ought to apply reason in trying to figure out what is morally
right or wrong sits uncomfortably with moral relativism. If
relativism is true, the moral position you arrive at after careful,
rational reflection will be no more or less true than the one you
start with. In which case there is no point in engaging in such
reflection – at least not so far as discovering what is true is
concerned. Those Humanists who are committed to the view that the
application of reason can help reveal what is true, morally speaking,
in effect reject moral relativism. And in fact many do so quite
explicitly (see for example Simon Blackburn’s British Humanism
Association Voltaire Lecture “Does Relativism Matter?”
(Blackburn 2001)

What
kind of justification do Humanists give for their most basic moral
principles? There is no single, official Humanist justification that
Humanists are obliged to endorse. However, many Humanists are drawn
to something like the following pragmatic justification. Moral norms
serve certain purposes, such as allowing us to live together in
relative harmony and facilitating cooperation. If we want to pursue
these goals, certain core norms must be adhered to - which helps to
explain why certain basic norms are found in almost almost every
culture, such as prohibitions on stealing, lying, and breaking
promises.

A
Humanist justification along such lines is offered by the writer and
broadcaster Margaret Knight:

Why
should I consider others? These ultimate moral questions, like all
ultimate questions, can be desperately difficult to answer, as every
philosophy student knows. Myself, I think the only possible answer to
this question is the Humanist one – because we are naturally
social beings; we live in communities; and life in any community,
from the family outwards, is much happier, and fuller, and richer if
the members are friendly and co-operative than if they are hostile
and resentful. (Knight, 1955)

Such
a pragmatic answer sidesteps the thorny philosophical question of
ultimate moral foundations (a question to which, according to
Humanists, even theism does not offer a satisfactory answer) by
beginning with the assumption that we do at least share certain
goals. Once it is acknowledged that morality is essentially tied up
with the promotion of human flourishing, the relativistic view that
what is morally right or wrong is nothing more than a matter of
personal subjective taste or preference is no longer tenable (what I
might subjectively prefer need not be what will allow myself and
others to flourish).

Will
we be good without religion?

It’s
often suggested that if religion is undermined, morality will
collapse and the fabric of society will unravel. In so far as
Humanism stands in opposition to, and tends to undermine, religious
belief, then, it is a threat to civilization.

But
what is the evidence for the view that moral behaviour requires a
religious underpinning?

One
popular line of argument is to point to, say, declining levels of
religiosity and (it is alleged) declining levels of moral behaviour
and over the last half-century or so, and to conclude that the former
is the primary cause of
the latter. However, such an argument would as it stands, commit
the post
hoc fallacy.
The observation that two events happen one after the other or
simultaneously does not, in isolation, provide much support to the
claim that the events are causally related.

But
in any case, while religiosity does indeed appear to be declining
across much of the West, is moral
behaviour also in decline? Invited to attend a conference at which
various people – mostly religious leaders – were invited
to consider Britain’s “post-Christian” future, I
was not much surprised to find the conference beginning with much
collective hand-wringing about the morally awful state of the nation.
However, after two days of reflection, a majority of attendees came
to the conclusion that Britain was actually morally better than it
was a half century ago, not least because it is no longer as racist,
sexist and homophobic as it once was. It is true that some indicators
of morality, such as criminality, do reveal a decline in moral
behaviour, but that does not establish that the country is, on
balance, less moral than it used to be.

Even
supposing that Britain is less moral than it used to be, it does not
follow that decline in religious belief is the primary cause. There
may be more vandalism and petty street crime and burglary. But there
are other explanations for an increase in crimes of that sort, such
as: people no longer know their neighbours well, homes stand empty
for much of each day. Tightly knit communities are effective at
controlling local crime. Communities are certainly less tightly knit
than they used to be, and that has at least as much to do with
changing economic and other circumstances as it has to do with
decline in religious belief.

Assuming
a rise in levels of crime, delinquency, sexually transmitted disease,
etc. over the last half-century or so, does the evidence support the
view that the primary cause is decline in religious belief? If
a decline in religiosity were the primary cause, then we would expect
those countries that have seen the greatest decline to have the most
serious problems. But that is not the case. Countries in which levels
of religious belief are comparatively low, such as Canada, Japan, and
the Scandanavian nations, do not have-greater-than average levels of
crime, delinquency and sexually transmitted disease.

Also
note that while levels of violent crime may be up in many countries
since the 1950s, they are dramatically lower than they were two
centuries ago, when those same countries were very religious indeed.
High levels of criminality can and clearly do have causes other than
loss of religious belief.

The
thought that religion is a necessary underpinning for morality is
also contradicted by history. Chinese history provides a
straightforward counter-example to the thesis that, without a
religiously-grounded morality, civilizations cannot survive. Francis
Fukuyama points out that

the
dominant cultural force in traditional Chinese society was, of
course, Confucianism, which is not a religion at all but rather a
rational, secular ethical doctrine. The history of China is replete
with instances of moral decline and moral renewal, but none of these
is linked particularly to anything a Westerner would call religion.
And it is hard to make the case that levels of ordinary morality are
lower in Asia than in parts of the world dominated by transcendental
religion. (Fukuyama, 1992, p.108)

We
find much the same levels of moral behaviour, and also much the same
kind of basic moral code, in China as we do in Europe over the same
period – despite a lack of religious foundation for moral
behaviour in China. Indeed, The Golden Rule was formulated by
Confucius before it was embraced by Christianity. From the
perspective of other cultures, the assumption that people won’t
be good without belief in God is baffling, as the Chinese writer Lin
Yu Tang points out:

To
the West, it seems hardly imaginable that the relationship between
man and man (morality) could be maintained without reference to a
Supreme Being, while to the Chinese it is equally amazing that men
should not, or could not, behave toward one another as decent beings
without thinking of their indirect relationship through a third
party. (Lin, Yu Tang, 1938)

In
short, the thought that a non-religious, Humanist society cannot be a
stable, moral society is not well-supported by the available
evidence, and in fact appears to be undermined by much of that
evidence.

Given
that many atheists continue to behave at least as morally as their
religious counterparts, and that the least religious developed
democracies countries appear to be as morally healthy as the most
religious, some religious critics of Humanism maintain that while
Humanism/atheism may not have brought about the moral collapse of
these societies yet,
the collapse is nevertheless coming. Such irreligious individuals and
societies are living off the accumulated “moral capital”
previously built up by religion, capital that will eventually run
out. The US neoconservative thinker Irving Kristol warns:

For
well over 150 years now, social critics have been warning us that
bourgeois society was living off the accumulated moral capital of
traditional religion and traditional moral philosophy. (Kristol 1999,
p.101)

This
warning continues to be echoed by, for example, Bishop Michael Nazir
Alli. Interviewed on the BBC Radio 4 Todayprogramme
on 6th November
2006, Ali said

British
society is based on a Christian vision and Christian values….
Unless people know what the springs are that feed our values, the
whole thing will dry up… We may already be living on past
capital…

Richard
Harries, Bishop of Oxford, has also used the phrase:

...many
people who have strong moral commitments without any religious
foundation were shaped by parents or grandparents for whom morality
and religion were fundamentally bound up.... How far are we living on
moral capital? (Harries, 2007)

The
appeal to moral capital provides an explanation for why there has
been no moral collapse yet. But the prediction, or at least the
concern, is that such a collapse is nevertheless coming.

But
what evidence is there to support this view that moral collapse is in
the pipeline? There appears to be little. Indeed, the fact that, for
two millennia, Chinese society exhibited much the same levels and
kind of moral behaviour as Christian Europe, despite Chinese morality
lacking roots in anything a Westerner would recognize as a religion,
suggests that such predictions of delayed doom are mistaken.

Religion
as a “necessary social adhesive”

It
is true that religion can function as a powerful social adhesive,
binding individuals together into communities. As the Humanist
philosopher Simon Blackburn acknowledges,

[o]ne
of the more depressing findings of social anthropology is that
societies professing a religion are more stable, and last longer,
than those that do not. It is estimated that breakaway groups like
communes or new age communities last some four times longer if they
profess a common religion than if they do not (Blackburn, 2004, p.18)

Should
we then reject Humanism on the grounds that it is likely to unravel
the social bonds – in particular, the religious bonds
- that hold us together? The suggestion that applying reason without
limits is likely to have such catastrophic consequences has a long
pedigree. John Gray says about Count Joseph de Maistre, a staunch
defender of the Church and Pope and one of the Enlightenments’
most vigorous critics, that

[w]hen
he represents reason and analysis as corrosive and destructive,
solvents of custom and allegiance that cannot replace the bonds of
sentiment and tradition which they weaken and demolish, he
illuminates, better perhaps than any subsequent writer, the absurdity
of the Enlightenment faith [for such it undoubtedly was] that human
society can have a rational foundation. If to reason is to question,
then questioning will have no end, until it has wrought the
dissolution of the civilization that gave it birth (Gray, 1995,
pp.125-6]

But
of course it does not follow that beliefs subjected to critical
scrutiny will be abandoned. Often we find ourselves all the more
passionately committed to principles that have successfully withstood
such scrutiny. Even if reason cannot underpin our most basic moral
convictions, it does not follow that the application of reason must,
then, lead us to abandon them, or show them to be false.

Moreover,
while religious belief may be a powerful social adhesive, it comes
with risks attached. Michael Ignatieff suggests that:

[t]
he more strongly you feel the bonds of belonging to your own group,
the more violent will be your feelings towards outsiders. (Ignatieff,
1993, p.88)

As
we bind the members of religious communities together more tightly,
we may well end up deepening the rifts between such communities.

But
perhaps there is another way of building a sense of community that
does not have such a toxic potential side-effect? As I explain below,
many Humanists insist that there is.

Example
of a Humanist approach to raising good citizens

While
there can be benefits to religious belief, and there are plenty of
anecdotes about people whose lives have been dramatically “turned
around” by religion, there would also appear to be benefits to
a more Humanist approach to moral education and raising moral
citizens.

While
there is no official Humanist approach per
se to
moral education, most Humanists would endorse the use of, for
example, communities
of inquiry and
“Philosophy for Children” programmes in the classroom, in
which children collective discuss, in a broadly philosophical way,
moral, religious and other “Big Questions”. Such
programmes have been trialled with success in a number of countries,
where they have produced not only measurable increases in IQ, but
also improved behaviour and ethos within the schools. There’s
growing evidence that such an approach helps build self-esteem and
confidence, engenders respect for others, improve behaviour, reduce
bullying, and so on (see for example Trickey and Topping, 2004). An
Ofsted report into one school running such a programme said:

The
thought provoking and exciting curriculum the school has developed
over the last two years is an outstanding component of the school’s
success …(this includes) the development of ‘Philosophy
for Children’, a powerful tool which both excites the pupils
and gives them the confidence to explore stimulating and challenging
ideas and concepts. It not only strengthens their academic learning,
but also encourages their empathy for others and gives them insights
into the adult world. (Ofsted
Curriculum Grade 1 Ropsley Primary School Ofsted Report, Feb 2007)

Perhaps
such an approach cannot produce the kind of tightly bound community
that religion often produces, but it does engender a sense of
empathy, connection and respect for, and encourages respectful
dialogue with, others, and, so many Humanists would argue, creates a
sense of community that is healthier and less divisive than the kind
that tends to be produced by religion.

Interestingly,
there is some evidence that this kind of approach to moral education
might also provide us with an effective defence against kind of moral
catastrophes than blighted the Twentieth Century.

In
his book Humanity,
A
Moral History of the Twentieth Century,
Professor Jonathan Glover, Director of the Centre for Medical Law and
Ethics at King’s College, London, reports his research into the
backgrounds of both those who engaged in mass killings in places like
Nazi Germany, Rwanda and Bosnia, and also those who were rescuers.
Glover said in a related newspaper interview,

If
you look at the people who shelter Jews under the Nazis, you find a
number of things about them. One is that they tended to have a
different kind of upbringing from the average person, they tended to
be brought up in a non-authoritarian way, bought up to have sympathy
with other people and to discuss things rather than just do what they
were told. (Glover, 1999)

In
their book The
Altruistic Personality,
Pearl and Samuel concur that the “parents of rescuers depended
significantly less on physical punishment and significantly more on
reasoning.” (Oliner, 1992, p.179). The Oliners add that
“reasoning communicates a message of respect for and trust in
children that allows them to feel a sense of personal efficacy and
warmth toward others.” Non-rescuers, by contrast, tended to
feel “mere pawns, subject to the power of external
authorities”(1992, p.177). The Oliners also found that, by
contrast, “religiosity was only weakly related to rescue”.

If
we want to avoid the kind of moral catastrophes that blighted the
Twentieth Century, there is evidence to support the view that our
best protection is provided, not by religion, but by the kind of
approach to moral education advocated by Humanists (an approach which
can also be applied within religious schools).

Humanist
organizations

Humanist
ideas have been around for millennia. Indeed, some philosophers of
Antiquity, such as Epicurus, probably qualify as Humanists. However,
it is only comparatively recently that the term “Humanism”
has been used in the way described here, and only recently that
people have organized themselves as Humanists in this sense. Humanist
organizations can now be found around the world. Most Humanist
organizations are affiliated to the International Humanist and
Ethical Union (IHEU). They engage in a variety of activities. They
campaigns for secular societies and for equal rights for the
non-religious. They also engage in educational and awareness-raising
work to counter common and sometimes pernicious misunderstandings of
what atheism and humanism involve (in the United States, for example,
atheists are widely assumed to be amoral, and are one of the least
trusted minorities). Humanist organizations often also provide
alternative marriage, funeral and other ceremonies for those who want
to mark important events in a non-religious way.